Publication Ethics and Malpractice (PEM) Statement

We are strongly committed to promoting the highest ethical publication practices, and therefore expect all participants involved in the publication process to uphold the high standards of publication ethics set out by the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE). Any cases of ethical misconduct or malpractice will be dealt with following the COPE guidelines and requirements. Ethical oversight is equally applied to Authors, Reviewers and Editors.

Requirements for Authors

• The submission of the manuscript implies that it is an original paper, the work of the author(s), it has not been published before, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Duplicate and redundant publication (or self-plagiarism) is not tolerated.
• Individual contributions of each co-author should be clearly specified, and the manuscript should be approved by all co-authors. (The work of contributors other than identified as authors can be recognized in an Acknowledgement.)
• The author(s) must confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest (competing interests of financial or other nature) associated with the submitted publication. Funding and support of the research, if any, must be clearly stated in the submission.
• The author(s) must ensure that all data in the submitted article are real and authentic.
• It is their responsibility to ensure that no participants were harmed, physically or mentally, during the preceding research, and that the personal details of the participants were fully anonymized. This applies to both textual citations and images.
• Publications that have been influential in determining the research work and the reported results should be properly cited. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes serious unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
• It is also the responsibility of the author(s) to check that all copyrighted material within the article has permission for publication.
• Author(s) may use AI-assisted technologies for polishing their manuscript to help readability and improve the use of language, but the use of generative AI (GenAI) to create new content (either text or images) is not permitted.
• They are encouraged to support data sharing and reproducibility, and thus, if possible, store their research data in a public repository and cite them accordingly.
• The authors should ensure that every manuscript submitted to the Journal has been read and corrected for clarity, grammar, and spelling.

The corresponding author must sign the Author’s declaration, a legally binding form confirming that the above standards have been met.

For a detailed description of the peer review process, please see also the Review Policy.

Requirements for Reviewers

• Reviewers hold the responsibility to be objective in their judgements.
• They have no conflict of interest concerning the research, the authors, and/or the research funders.
• They point out relevant published work which is not yet cited by the author(s), and evaluate whether the manuscript has already been published in another journal.
• Reviewers treat the reviewed articles confidentially, and remain anonymous throughout the double-blind review process.

For a detailed description of the peer review process and the role of Reviewers, see also the Review Policy.

Requirements for Editors

• Editors hold full authority to reject/accept an article.
• They remain objective in evaluation and decision making.
• They help the Journal to remain committed to avoiding gender, racial/ethnic and geographic disparities in scholarly publishing, promoting by this the realization of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) principles.
• Editors have no conflict of interest concerning the articles they reject/accept.
• They preserve the anonymity of reviewers to authors and vice versa preserve the anonymity of authors to reviewers.
• The Editorial Team is committed to a strict policy against plagiarism and false data. To this purpose, the editor checks the originality of the manuscript using a plagiarism checker before starting the review process.

For a detailed description of the peer review process and the role of editors, see also the Review Policy.

Post-Publication Discussions

Complaints and Appeals: Complaints can be raised by anyone and should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief.

Correction Notices: Whenever it is recognized that a published paper contains a significant inaccuracy, such as one of the following is needed: rearranging the authorship order, adding important information to the text, changing some data, or replacing an entry in the reference list, correction can be initiated by the author, by submitting a Correction notice.

Research Misconduct and Ethical Malpractice: Any cases of research misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, data falsification/fabrication, citation manipulation, etc.) are to be thoroughly investigated and publicly communicated. Suppose it turns out that an already published article was unsuitable for publication for some well-based ethical reason, the article will be retracted in an identifiable way to readers and indexing systems: by issuing a corrigendum or erratum and, in serious cases, by notifying other relevant institutions and the authorities as well.